City Cross May Land Frankenmuth in court

A local resident’s complaints about a Lutheran cross on the city seal may have Frankenmuth headed for a federal lawsuit.

Lloyd Clarke, a retiree and longtime political activist who chuckles when you suggest that perhaps he likes being a gadfly, already succeeded a few weeks ago in petitioning the city to remove crosses from a city bridge. Now he has his sights set on removing a Lutheran cross from the official city shield, which he says makes the community of 5000 in Saginaw County less welcoming to those of a different background and amounts to an official endorsement of Christianity. Clark plans to go to the city council meeting on May 6 to request the removal of the cross and says that if it’s not removed, he will contact Americans United for the Separation of Church and State or the American Civil Liberties Union and prepare to file a federal lawsuit over the issue. Clark says his goal is to make Frankenmuth a more welcoming city:

“My goal now is to convince the city council that they should delete the cross from the shield. That would be the best solution because otherwise it prolongs the effort to bring them within the constitution. This will help make Frankenmuth a community of inclusion, not exclusion. They want to be a German, Lutheran, Christian community, and they can be culturally, but not legally.”

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The official city shield, or seal, was adopted by the Frankenmuth city council in 1963. An official document put out by the Frankenmuth Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Visitors Bureau describes the religious meaning of the symbolism:

The seal of the great reformer, Dr. Martin Luther, is the open rose with a heart and white cross. That and the sheaf of grain stand for the 12 farmer leaders plus the pastor, his wife and her child who, by word and example, were to teach and live Christianity in the New World.

You can see the Lutheran cross in the bottom right hand corner of the picture on the left. Clarke calls this a clear endorsement not only of Christianity, but of Lutheran Christianity specifically; city officials say that it is merely an acknowledgment of the history and traditions of the people who settled and founded the town. Frankenmuth is a predominately German community, of course, and Martin Luther is the most prominent and influential religious figure in German history.

But that history and tradition includes some troubling elements that might dramatically affect one’s perceptions of the meaning of that symbolism. While Luther is best known for sparking the Protestant revolution against the Catholic Church, many historians also note that his virulent, even violent, anti-semitism helped plant the seeds that led later in German history to the Holocaust. In 1543, Luther wrote On the Jews and Their Lies, a book with many passages that could have been taken directly from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. He called Jews “children of the devil” and “vermin,” likening them to “gangrene” that eats away at the body of society. He urged his followers to burn down their synagogues and homes and purge Jews from society, something he did himself in throwing the Jews out of Saxony and many German towns during his life. His book concluded by calling for the Jews to be murdered:

There is no other explanation for this than the one cited earlier from Moses